Every FAMOUS bodybuilder after Eugene Sandow is not natural and used/experimented/abused/ultra-abused steroids and other recreational drugs. The first bodybuilder that comes to mind is Steve Reeves. Steve Reeves was not a natural bodybuilder. He did experiment with low doses of steroids and other drugs. Truth be told people from back then are no different than people today - they still did everything in their power to get bigger. Everything.
As 2PAC would say: "Some things will never change."
After Eugene Sandow's death the scene of bodybuilding changed completely. The two famous bodybuilders were John Grimek and Steve Reeves. However Steve Reeves was much more Hollywood material due to his facial features and that's why he has become the face of bodybuilding at that time. He was Arnold before Arnold. He possessed that classic macho, a little too sensitive, look and people loved it.
Steve Reeves had excellent genetics for bodybuilding - small waist, wide shoulder, strong bones. During his military service Steve was called "The Shape". However there was one secret behind his reign few people know. That little secret is called - John Bosley Ziegler or the godfather of Methandrostenolone (known as Dianabol/D-bol). While D-bol was originally released in the 1960s by Ciba Specialty Chemicals (company Ziegler worked for at some point in his career) there were prototypes of the product already during the 1940s.
Excerpts from the article: Testosterone Dreams: Sex, doctors, and the male hormone
"Testosterone was first synthesized in 1935. Shortly after testosterone was produced in a European laboratory, following a competition among three pharmaceutical companies, Time magazine reported that: German and Swiss chemical laboratories are already prepared … to manufacture from sheep’s wool all the testosterone the world needs to cure homosexuals (and) revitalize old men.”
"The first public advocate of testosterone therapy for aging men was the popular science journalist Paul de Kruif, whose manifesto The Male Hormone was published with some fanfare in 1945. Excerpted in Reader’s Digest and promoted by a full-page review in Newsweek (“Hormones for He-Men”), The Male Hormone was in some respects a prophetic book. The potential market for a rejuvenating male hormone seemed to be enormous: “How many millions of American males, not the men they used to be, would flock to the physicians and the druggist, a bit shame-faced and surreptitious, maybe, but hopeful, murmuring: ‘Doc, how about some of this new male hormone?’
During that period of time (the 40s) Ziegler experimented - on himself and athletes with many testosterone versions. Ziegler already had access to the popular steroid testosterone propionate and the extremely dangerous fat burner DNP. There was also experimentation with the powerful hormone insulin. The really scary part is that were are talking about the 1940s -the prime years of Steve Reeves. He, Grimek and a bunch of other lifters did catch that phase and were no strangers to the "finishing touch"*
